Israel and France have averted a diplomatic crisis by agreeing that a French diplomat, who hit an IDF soldier after she was dragged from a vehicle delivering aid to Palestinians, should return to Paris.
Renegade diplomat, Marion Castaing attacks Policeman
The incident in the West Bank one week ago had the potential to escalate, with Israel considering expelling her and aid groups privately pressing Paris and other European countries involved to protest at the treatment of their diplomats.
U.S. President Barack Obama and Iranian President Hassan Rohani spoke by phone on Friday, the highest-level contact between the two countries since the Iranian Revolution in 1979 and a sign that both sides are serious about reaching a pact on Iran’s nuclear program.
Rohani (Photo by Reuters), and Obama (Photo by AFP).
Obama had hoped to meet with Rohani earlier this week while both men were in New York for the United Nations General Assembly, but Iran decided a meeting would be too complicated. Continue Reading »
SAN FRANCISCO – September 27, 2013. Did ya’ hear the one about how Facebook routinely removes hate pages targeting racial minorities and the LGBT community, but allows anti-Semitic, anti-Jewish and anti-Israel hate pages to stay up online? No? Well, good, because it ain’t very funny, says Michael Mendelson, an average hard-working American, who is determined to do something about it. Continue Reading »
Marking thirteen years to the second Palestinian uprising (intifada), Palestinian protesters clashed with Israeli security forces in the West Bank, in Jerusalem and on the Gaza Strip border.
Palestinians burning effigies of Netanyahu and Peres in Gaza, September 27, 2013. Photo: REUTERS/Ibraheem Abu Mustafa
Protesters hurled stones and burned tires in clashes across the West Bank.
In Hebron, some 300 protesters threw rocks at IDF soldiers, an IDF spokeswoman said.
By Noam (Dabul) Dvir
Following Friday prayers, young Arabs threw stones at police forces near the Damascus Gate in Jerusalem‘s Old City. One officer sustained light injuries to his hand. Border Guard officers dispersed the rioters with stun grenades, among other crowd dispersal means, and arrested four people.
A Palestinian stone thrower bearing the Hamas flag, right, uses a sling shot to throw stones with his comrade towards Israeli security forces. [Archives] – Photo: AFP
By Anne Cohen, With Reuters
Four Jews are among 24 of America’s most creative and original thinkers who will each get $625,000 “genius” grants this year.
Genius Jews: Jeffrey Brenner (above),primary care physician in Camden, is among the 24 recipients of the MacArthur “Genius” Awards
Dr. Jeffrey Brenner, 44, Sheila Nirenberg, a New York City neuroscientist, Sara Seager, a Canadian-American astrophysics professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Carl Haber, a physicist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory are among the 13 men and 11 women picked by the John D. Continue Reading »
By Kochava Rozenbaum
In cooperation with the Har Bracha community in the Shomron (Samaria) and Rabbi Eliezer Melamed, the head of the Har Bracha yeshiva, dozens of Christian volunteers from the United States joined families in the year’s annual harvest of crops.
Tommy Waller led his group of volunteers from HaYovel, an international humanitarian organization which supports farming in Yesha (Judea and Samaria).
Despite previous accusations that HaYovel were a missionary group, Rabbi Melamed described the event as “a blessed phenomena of non-Jews seeing the truth and pledging themselves to help the Jewish Nation in the heartland of the Jewish Land.” Continue Reading »
On the eve of PA President Mahmoud Abbas’s speech at the UN General Assembly, a number of Palestinian groups called for launching a third intifada against Israel.
Hamas’s Kassam Brigades [file]. – Photo: REUTERS/Ahmed Jadallah
By AFP
Human Rights Watch on Thursday urged Israel to stop trying to displace Bedouin families in the West Bank, where the army last week manhandled European diplomats on an aid mission.
Bedouin village (Archives) – Photo: Elior Levy
“The Israeli military should end its unjustified attempts to forcibly remove a decades-old community,” the New York-based watchdog’s Middle East director Joe Stork said in a statement.
“Israeli forces didn’t just rough up diplomats, they demolished every single building in Makhul and ordered the residents to leave and never come back,” he said. Continue Reading »
By Adam Ross
Four members of the Fatah affiliated Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades group have been arrested by Hamas in the Gaza Strip.
The arrests were reported by the Maan news agency, who said the four, yielding weapons, delivered a vitriolic press conference from the Al Ghafri Tower in Gaza City. The report said after journalists left, Hamas men surrounded the building and forced the Aqsa fighters to unmask before they were detained.
In recent months, Hamas security agencies have detained dozens of Fatah-affiliated political activists accusing them of belonging to the ‘Tamarod’ (Rebel) movement, which was formed to overthrow Muslim Brotherhood rule in Egypt. Continue Reading »
“We now possess deterrent weapons that are more important and more sophisticated than chemical weapons,” Syrian President Bashar Assad told visitors to his palace in Damascus on Thursday.
Syrian President Bashar Assad gives an interview to Venezuelan state TV TeleSUR, Sept. 26. 2013. – Photo: REUTERS/SANA/Handout
He emphasized that he had no need for chemical weapons.
According to the report, which was carried by Hezbollah’s paper Al-Akhbar, Assad said this was because the situation in Syria “has never been better,” as “we created chemical weapons in the ’80s as a deterrent against Israel’s nuclear arsenal.
By Gil Kalian, Calcalist
Israel‘s support for its farmers carries a heavy economic and social price, according to a report released by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), which looked into the agricultural support policy in 47 countries, which are responsible for 80% of the global agricultural produce.
Wheat field in the Hula Valley – Photo courtesy: Wikimedia Commons
The report’s findings reveal that agricultural products in Israel are 11% more expensive than the OECD average. Continue Reading »
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas addressed the United Nations General Assembly on Thursday in New York, saying that the Palestinians refuse to enter into “a vortex” of new interim agreements with Israel.
Abbas speaks at the UN General Assembly. – Photo: AFP
Speaking for the first time in the name of the State of Palestine, Abbas said raising the status of Palestine was not aimed at deligitimizing Israel, but “to consecrate the legitimacy of a State that must exist, which is Palestine.” Continue Reading »
Official Iranian news agency FARS said Thursday that CNN misrepresented Iranian President Hasan Rouhani’s statements in an interview with the network’s Christiane Amanpour, saying the network added the words “Holocaust” and “reprehensible” to its translation.
CNN’s Amanpour – Reuters
“The CNN aired its interview with Rouhani on Tuesday but the news channel added to or changed parts of his remarks when Christiane Amanpour asked him about the Holocaust,” FARS said. Continue Reading »
Al-Qaida-linked terrorists have allegedly demolished several ancient Jewish mausoleums in the northern Syrian city of Aleppo, Iranian media reported Tuesday.
A fighter from Islamist Syrian rebel group Jabhat al-Nusra in Aleppo. – Photo: REUTERS
The graves were located in the historical town of Tadif, according to the semi-official Iranian Fars news agency and other Iranian news outlets.
The terrorists reportedly belong to the al-Qaida-backed al-Nusra Front.
A tomb said to be that of Ezra the Scribe is located in the town. Continue Reading »
Many ‘Lone Soldiers’, who have no family in Israel, can use some help with doing their laundry, Shabbat meals, or the occasional ‘Care Package’ for upcoming holidays.
Check out lonesoldiercenter.com to see how you can help these brave, beautiful young people who volunteer to protect Israel.
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